


Hard Won Homecomings

by Smilla



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 2010, Episode:Exile on Main St., F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-28
Updated: 2010-09-28
Packaged: 2017-10-12 06:40:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/122000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smilla/pseuds/Smilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lisa hadn't needed Dean, not the three times she'd opened her door and invited him in. She didn't need him this last year, and she isn't going to need him now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hard Won Homecomings

**Author's Note:**

> [Original post [here](http://smilla02.livejournal.com/213048.html).]

Bobby's house is silent in a way that makes the hair on Lisa's arms stand on end. It's dusty and oppressive, a sense of history hidden in the many shadows and the flowery wallpaper, and lurking behind closed doors.

The one Bobby opens for her and Ben reveals a room with two coats and a closet and dust in the corners so thick the colors of the tiles have disappeared. She tastes the air, heavy and musty, unused and old.

"Thank you," Lisa says while he goes to open the window and draw the curtains aside. The fresh air doesn't do a lot to make the smell better, but Lisa doesn't think she minds.

Bobby touches his hat with his forefingers, says, "You're welcome. I'm sorry it isn't much."

Lisa is ready to reassure him, but the man is out of the door so fast, the words dry on her lips.

"Mom?" Ben asks and she turns with as much of a serene face she can muster. Ben tries for less than a second to put on a brave face himself, but it crumples immediately, fear shining through, and something hard and cold settles into Lisa's heart.

"Are the monsters coming back?"

Lisa sits on one of the cots so her face is even to Ben, ignores the puff of dust rising from the coverlet and the spring she feels pushing against her ass. She takes Ben's hands in hers. There had been nightmares after Ben was kidnapped and a sense of helplessness she's not sure she'll ever get over. In a way, it'd been the most unsettling revolution in her life, a veil lifted that had painted the world in harsh reds and blacks.

She looks directly into Ben's eyes. "Dean's going to take care of it," she says, and it comes easily to her lips because it's true.

Ben nods and Lisa smiles and ruffles his head, the shape familiar and reassuring under her palm.

"I'm declaring amnesty on your PSP time," she says, then goes to find one of those _Reader's Digest_ Bobby was talking about.

-*-

Later that afternoon, Dean comes upstairs to say goodbye. His eyes find Ben first thing, and it gives Lisa strength, she won't lie, that he'll fight for him as hard as she does.

"Hey, buddy, are you all right?"

Ben waves his yes, eyes bright and cheeks flushed with whatever violent game he's playing.

Dean doesn't cross the threshold and Lisa meets him there, sees something pass through his eyes the moment Ben looks back to his game, far-eyed like he's listening to the clang of weapons on a battlefield from history.

Lisa has learned to wait Dean out, so she stands there, silent and close enough to smell his scent. It's different somehow from what's she's used to, sharper with sweat and fear. Dean hesitates before speaking, two aborted tries, tongue wetting his dry lips.

"Sam and I… we used to sleep in this room when we came over." He doesn't give any temporal reference, as if the past is a timeless block of 'before', but something breaks in his voice toward the end and his eyes widen.

Lisa puts a hand on his arm, rests it there without trying to hold him.

"It's not the same," Lisa says with fervor. "It's not."

Dean doesn't answer, but he leans to kiss her with a fleeting touch of lips. He's gone in the next heartbeat, and it takes Lisa a moment to notice that he hasn't left any promise behind.

She follows him from the window, sees him leaving through the cluttered entryway of Bobby's Savage Yard. She looks upward, towards rain-laden clouds oppressive with heat and humidity that maybe, by night, will bring a storm. She hasn't been to South Dakota many times – once, when Ben was four-year old, for a conference in Bryant – but she'd been cooped up inside the hotel, breathing the conditioned air.

She turns to find Ben asleep on the cot, face smashed into the pillow, fingers limp around his toy.

When she glances outside, she realizes she's looked away long enough for Dean to disappear with his brother beyond the iron gate.

Restlessness settles under her skin with every passing minute amplified by the ominous silence of the big house. Dean's words on the stairs are a constant echo she plays and re-plays. She's learned that what Dean doesn't say is nearly as important as the things he voices, she's learned to understand what he's not going to say, dancing in circles around the parts he holds dear.

With a huff, she sits on the cot, stands up again after she manages to find the exact loose spring she'd found before. She looks over Ben, and let that encompassing feeling of tenderness sweep her away.

Lisa doesn't know if she managed to get through to Dean – he rarely gives her a sense of what he's retaining – but there's something in what he said that makes her back straighten, suddenly awfully clear. I'm sorry, he said, and Lisa knows that it has nothing to do with living together for a year.

Lisa hadn't needed Dean, not the three times she'd opened her door and invited him in. She didn't need him this last year, and she isn't going to need him now. Damn Dean, anyway. She's not gonna let him treat their last year like a terrible mistake.

-*-

The next morning Lisa is awake before dawn. The storm had broken during the night with a cacophony of thunders and rain that lasted less than an hour, but went on and on in her strange dreams. It sent away the oppressive heat of the day before and left the air chilly with impending autumn, though. She lies looking at Ben still sleeping peacefully on his side until the sky starts to clear, then she stretches, arms first and then her legs. She feels gross in her wrinkled jacket and jeans, but her need for coffee beats morning routines by a wide margin. Bobby strikes her as someone who'd have a big stash of it in his kitchen; decision made, she goes downstairs.

The light of dawn is creeping, muted and tentative, through the dark curtains in what she supposes is a living room. There's a blanket on the dark couch, books lying open on every surface. The titles she catches in the dim light belong to that other reality Dean's fought all his living life. She lingers, but only for a moment, over the inked picture of a horned monster.

This is the first look she's given at Dean's life before their life together, and Lisa is curious, thirsty for details Dean has glossed over as unimportant. But there's barely anything here, no pictures on the shelves or mementos, only more tomes, dusty and old, crowding the space. Whatever life had been lived here once upon a time has been erased since long ago.

She shakes her head and resumes looking for the kitchen, finds it behind a sliding door: a small square of walls thick with old grease and cluttered with cooking tools, more open books on the table. If she squints, she can see an old feminine touch that loiters around painted tin cans and delicate mugs. Beside the coffee pot, there's an apron, as greased and stained as the rest of the kitchen. She stretches the fabric and reads what's printed on it, and then she smiles. Who would have thought that Bobby had a sense of humor.

The pot is hot, freshly made coffee fragrant when she fills a cup. She startles when she hears a noise, coffee sloshing on her fingers when she twirls around. Bobby raises his hand in a calming motion, while she hisses at the burning sensation on her skin.

"I'm sorry I spooked you," Bobby says and Lisa huffs an annoyed breath.

"It's nothing." She raises the hand with the mug. "I hope you don't mind."

"No, of course, no."

Lisa's gotten used to long silences, and she wasn't exactly expecting anecdotes from when Dean was growing up from this guy, but even accounting for that, Bobby's silence feels loaded with awkward, sideways glances he throws her way, as if he's afraid of looking at her head-on.

What the hell, she thinks, utterly pissed all of a sudden. She sits at the table without waiting for an invitation; she isn't going to make this easier for anybody.

Bobby tinkers with something at the stove, and then surprises Lisa by sitting on the other side of the table, hands curled around a cup.

Lisa takes a sip from her mug – the coffee is strong and bitter, slightly burnt but not unpleasant. It's only marginally better than what Dean usually drinks.

She chooses her words carefully, but the question is pressing on her since the day before.

"You knew," she says. "About Dean's brother, about Sam."

Bobby's nod is a resigned sigh. "I'm sorry you got involved," he says. "I wanted this for Dean. I thought--" he stops and still won't meet her eyes.

Lisa takes another sip of coffee. She's not going to judge Dean's family, no. But she's thinking of that night Dean woke her up, eyes bright with hope, and said, _I found a way, Lisa, I found a way._ She's thinking of the state he came back in, two days later, out of his mind with pain and fever and fresh grief, hating himself for coming back empty-handed and maybe for coming back at all and needing her.

She'd questioned, after each futile attempt, if she would have seen him again had he been successful, and then hated herself for those traitorous thoughts faced with the depth of his desperation. Part of her still wants to know.

Bobby looks poised on the verge of saying something else when Lisa finally speaks.

"I'm not sorry," she says. "I'm just angry that you kept the best parts of Dean with you."

-*-

The cell rings shrill and loud in the small room. Ben wakes up with a start and Lisa makes a placating gesture, even as she scrambles to answer.

Dean's number blinks on the screen and she takes a deep breath before she hits the green button.

"I'm coming to bring you home," Dean says.

"Okay," Lisa says.

-*-

Sid and Laurie's funeral is a week later. Lisa cries for the both of them, because Dean refuses to shed any tears, withdrawn and wound up with too many things simmering under the surface.

Back at home, after the service, she spends an hour tangled around Ben on his bed, tries to reassure him with words and touch in equal measure. Her eyes are burning and itching but she doesn't close them, stares at the canopy of fluorescent stars Dean and Ben glued to the ceiling when they moved in.

Ben's nearly asleep when Dean appears in the frame of the door, a dark silhouette back-lit by the lamp in the alleyway.

"Are we safe?" Ben asks in the grainy silence, but Lisa can't say if he's asking her or Dean.

Dean clears his throat and Lisa's body tenses waiting for his answer.

"I'm working on it, kiddo."

Lisa relaxes back around Ben. She doesn't know what she would have done had Dean lied to her son.

-*-

"I thought you were working today," Lisa says.

Dean's glances over his shoulder from where he's kneeling on the floor, but doesn't stop whatever he's doing. He has two of Ben's sharpies by his knees, one black and one red, and a few small bags that smell awful.

"I took a few days off."

Lisa fingers the amulet he gave her and Ben on the way back from South Dakota, then she sits cross-legged on the floor, back against the wall.

"Dean," she calls, tone sharp enough that he gets she's serious.

"Lisa, please--"His hands fall limps between his knees, head hanging low between his shoulders

"No, Dean." She's firm, heart beating fast now that the time has come to know the truth. "I never asked you what changed your mind," she says. She hasn't asked him much at all, not about Sam's sudden return from the dead, nothing about what's going on.

Dean draws in a breath, the look on his face the one he has when he wants to bullshit his way out of a conversation. Lisa stops him with a raised hand before he can gather himself.

"Let me say this, okay?"

Dean nods, deflated, and Lisa hates that look on him – she'd give fucking money not to see it ever again – but she's waited more than the things at stake allows.

"I don't know why you changed your mind, but you have to know that I never needed you. I was all right on my own."

There's a hurt look Dean cannot mask fast enough, and Lisa is sorry for it, but she needs to set him straight before the only thing that holds them together is obligation.

She keeps on. "God only knows why, though, but I wanted you here. And god only knows how, it worked even with the truckload of issues you have."

Dean scoots back, mirrors her position, their knees bump together and she's glad for the naturalness of their physical connection, knowing how much Dean craves and refuses it at the same time. It makes what she has to say easier and she's upset enough to want any advantage she can grasp.

"I'm not settling with whatever you think you owe me, Dean. I don't want you out of whatever obligation--"

"That's not all of it, and you know that," Dean says, voice ragged and desperate for her to get it. Lisa should be blind not to see how thin he's stretching himself again.

"I know, Dean, even when you don't. I'm not going to asks more than you can give."

'What do you want me to do, Lisa?" Dean says after a long time, and he looks so weary, she notices, eyes sunken and flat. "I won't leave you and Ben unprotected--"

Before he can finish, Lisa collects her courage, "Then teach, me," she says in a rush.

She'd braced herself for his explosion, but it never comes.

"Lisa, no."

"Yes," she insists, palm on his cheek because she can't help herself from touching. "This is not on you," she says. "Not all of it, anyway," she amends. Lisa knew the dangers upfront and she won't lie to herself right now.

"The world has never been the same for me since Ben was kidnapped and you know it. You could stay glued to our side every moment of the day; paint each of these walls with more protections than you already have. You could stop going to work and sit in the middle of the room with weapons spread around you. You could do all of this or you could teach me how to help you out, because you know it, Dean, whatever you do it may end not being enough."

Dean flinches like Lisa was expecting him to, the wound opens and starts bleeding right under her eyes, but she holds him back when he tries to get away from under her caress. Lisa knows she's getting under all his defenses, one by one, for the simple fact that she knows of the walls erected around them. "I'm not going to start hunting, Dean, okay? That would be impractical and definitely it's not something I have any interest in. But I need to learn how to protect what's mine if I need to."

Lisa knows Dean won't consider himself included in that group, but it doesn't matter for now.

She waits to see in which direction he tips, eyes focused on his until she sees the moment he crumbles. No matter how relieved she is, she can't manage to feel victorious.

"Okay," he says finally.

The rest of the morning, she helps him to draw symbols and runes in hidden corners, listens to his even voice when he explains their origin and their aim, what they'll work against. Later, damp and achy with exertion, she takes Dean's left hand in hers and guides him to their room.

Dean's never been as naked under her, laid bare and gutted open and not trying to hide - a collection of battles lost and battles gained. Lisa kisses him, tries to put back together the sharp edges of him with fingertips and gentle lips.

-*-

It's a cold morning in early October when Lisa and Dean drive to a field a few miles out of town.

Lisa's wearing her oldest jeans and solid boots and an old gray shirt that was Dean's. Dean's wearing a jacket Lisa has never seen, and a ragged look that thaws a bit when Lisa says, "It's all right."

He parks on the shoulder of the road, and Lisa stands by his side as he takes the duffle from the trunk. She follows him down a narrow trail and to a clearing hidden by a cluster of trees and bushes. In the clearing, there are the remains of an old wooden fence where Dean can set the targets – cans of Coke and Sprite he's collected during the week – with practiced easiness and a confidence in his movements that Lisa had missed whenever Dean was cooking or mending frames or mowing the lawn. It's crystal clear to her, right then, that he's born to this. She's finally getting all those missing parts of Dean he'd carefully put away in the past year; a smile comes to her lips and with it a wave of melancholy.

When he gives him the rifle, she doesn't hesitate to take it.

"Get used to its weight, first," Dean says. He corrects her grip on it until she gets it right. Lisa feels an undercurrent of unexpected pleasure when he says, smirk finally firm in place, "That's my girl."

The wind chooses that moment to make the treetops shiver, and Lisa thinks that this is it, the moment the changes she's set in motion when he opened her door to Dean and made space for him, are catching up with her.

"Don't fight the kick-back when you shoot," says Dean. "Try to relax, or it will hurt more."

Lisa nods. She's not going to fight it.

\--


End file.
